Dangers of Low Carb Diets

The Dangers of Low Carb Diets in Teens
By M. A. Fulmar

Teenagers are often turning to low carb diets without knowing dangers can accompany following one of these diets both in the short run and in the long term. Students hear a lot about bulimia and anorexia and they hear a lot about obesity. Of course, for their image’s sake, they want to avoid the latter, but somehow, for a lot of teenagers, bulimia and anorexia are not as unthinkable as obesity. Some of the dangers of low carb diets are long term in the sphere of drastically changing eating habits for life if teenagers get too fixed in a certain way of eating. The more immediate dangers of these low carb diets are physical, mental and performance based.

Short Term Negative Side Effects

Teenagers do have one advantage over adults when it comes to starting a low carb diet, and that’s that fewer teens drink coffee and caffeinated beverages than do adults. However, in today’s soda culture, though you might not be thinking of those cokes as equivalents of your coffee and tea, your teenager’s soda drinking habit, if caffeinated, will cause their side effects of low carb diets to be similar to yours would be. Assuming that teenagers do not experience caffeine withdrawal as part of their low carb diet side effects, the side effects that they will probably experience are overtiredness, bad breath, inability to concentrate, leg cramps, and in severe cases, dizziness.

One of the dangers of low carb diets for young people is the change to the brain. The brain, like the rest of the body, needs fuel to function well, and a teenager needs their brain to be working at top capacity in order to do well in school. The long term danger of low carb diets in teens is if the body adapts to the low carb diet, i.e. if it begins to be normal to be overtired and not be able to think clearly, the teenager will stay in this sort of haze indefinitely. Similarly to severely sleep-deprived teens, the body might seem to adjust, that’s the way the human body functions after all, but the body needs fuel.

The bottom line is that the body’s preferred fuel to burn as energy is carbohydrates. Other substances are needed for other reasons, but the body turns to sugar first for energy, whether it be physical or mental energy. Unfortunately, low carb diets have the danger of depriving teenagers of their thinking power and their physical drive to be active in sports and other activities, so if your teen is on one or contemplating one, help them make healthy decisions, whether they decide to follow the diet or not.

Author Details:
M. A. Fulmar, copywriter for various websites including the health articles on www.naturalcrystaldeodorant.com and www.microdermabrasionskincare.com

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